Explorations and Education Conference, held at The University of British Columbia, 1 April 2011

Abstract:

In recent years the Premier’s Technology Council has drawn on the rhetoric of ‘21st-century education’ to frame discussions of educational policy and reform in British Columbia. BC’s Teacher’s Federation, in contrast, has challenged the appropriateness of ‘21st-century education’, and has called for a more systematic interrogation of the contours, coherence, and value of the ‘21st-century’ policy narrative. Acceding to this warrant, this paper builds upon my ongoing inquiry into ‘21st-century education’. Taking the Technology Council’s “special report” on ‘21st-century education’ as a site of analysis, this paper draws on the tools of critical discourse analysis to identify and problematize instances of agency, modality, and validity in the Technology Council’s vision for ‘21st-century education’. In sharing this inquiry I hope to highlight the need for sustained critical engagement with educational policies in BC.